


Years Out

by verdenal



Category: A Separate Peace - John Knowles
Genre: M/M, minor Gene/OFC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 12:48:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2812526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdenal/pseuds/verdenal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gene tries to write his memoirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Years Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pwnmercys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pwnmercys/gifts).



Gene thinks of Finny most often during the winter holidays. The list of reasons goes on and on: the holiday rhetoric of love and coming together and forgiveness, most of all towards your loved ones, and the idea of _loved ones_ at all—a phrase that makes Gene feel strange and hollow (who does he love? what makes someone a Loved One in the end? has Gene ever—? was he—?); the dead trees, worse than either trees and dead things which each separately stir his memory, something about their grey gnarled bodies seems fitting; the cold, which makes everything brighter, and Finny was so bright; his students, too, who become realer to him as winter break approaches, and their enthusiasm for the holidays shines through even as they grumble their way through his class, and it reminds him of his own school days, and so, of course, Finny; then there is the sun, and the wind, the constant threat of falling on the ice. 

Finny, really, is there in the back of his mind all the time, and it is during the winter that Gene is weakest, and Finny slips back into his consciousness. There’s nothing for it. Gene has tried for years to exorcise himself, and every year he would discover he had failed. By now he’s learned to let it happen. This is less of a punishment than he deserves. In a just world he would be in prison, or dead, but not on the battlefield, nowhere he could be honored. The war is over now, anyway. The political climate is Cold; appropriate, Gene thinks, for more than one reason. His students ask him about the war, because all adults belong to the same generation as far as they care. Gene tells them what he remembers, and likes to believe that they appreciate knowing what it was like to be a schoolboy back then, that it’s realer to them and therefore valuable somehow. He wants the memories to have meaning or use at least for someone.

Not that Gene has nothing left to him but memories. That isn’t true. He’s built himself a life that he can live with, which is as much as any human being can ask for, he figures. For a long time he rarely thought about Devon. He set about reinventing himself as much as he could, but there is only so far you can run, Gene learned. In the end you have to turn around and face yourself, and that is what he has been doing these last three years. He should probably write his memoirs or something. That seems like a safe way of taking ownership of his past. One day someone is going to ask him a question he doesn’t want to answer—who that will be, he doesn’t know. It isn’t that important. Maybe one of his classmates from Devon, maybe a former teacher, or a coworker, a friend of a friend of a friend. He wants to have the answers ready.

Legally, Gene didn’t kill Phineas. He has known that since the day it happened, and he has known for nearly as long that he killed him, no matter what the law has to say about it. That was the first thing he had to force himself to accept: that though he was no soldier he had taken a life. Once he makes peace with it he holds it up as the cornerstone of his existence, as the one thing about himself that is immutable and all-encompassing. Who is Gene? What kind of person is he? He is the man who killed Finny, who got away with it.

 

But when he does, finally, sit down to write about it, once the term is over and he can’t bear to look at another student essay, the words seem insufficient. I killed Phineas that year had lost its prophetic ring. Everything about it is stripped bare, like the landscape, and that is how Gene knows he’s avoiding something; he’s started to talk like a poet. He is many things, but a poet he is not. He tried for one semester in college to write poetry, and it ended in utter disaster. 

He starts again, and again, and again, but it’s useless. He can’t start with killing Finny, but he can’t start with anything but Finny. Maybe he should abandon the idea altogether; who, after all, would read it?

Gene leaves the typewriter with the paper still in it and heads to his kitchen. He pours himself a drink—a gin and tonic, which his father had a called a woman’s drink, being a man who drank bourbon exclusively—and officially gives up on the day. It’s already dark and he knows himself well enough to recognize when he’s done being productive.

He shouldn’t still live alone. The thought comes to him once or twice every month; he’s slowly passing the age where bachelorhood is considered endearing. He should have married Kerry, who had beautifully curled dark hair and read French and rarely took him as seriously as he took himself. It had never been clear why they didn’t stay together: not to him, or to his parents, and not, it had seemed, to Kerry, either. He misses her, sometimes, more than he misses most living people. She was good for and to him. Gene isn’t sure he returned the favor. Gene, broadly, speaking is not good for people. He is good for his students, in the sense that he is a competent teacher and he doesn’t actively dislike the, which is the case for some of his older colleagues. It is better to say that Gene is good at his job, and terrible at being a person. 

He’s always been that way, he can see now. The gin adds clarity and courage. Ever since Devon, at the very least. Maybe it started with Finny—not with killing Finny, but with knowing him. Finny was the first person Gene can accurately say he was bad for. At first blush it’s an obvious statement, but Gene means something else, something stranger and deeper. Ever since he’s started allowing himself to think about Finny again, he has been unable to shake the thought that there was something off about them, something that, if Gene had seen it, he could have fixed or destroyed or, or something. He could have done something to save Phineas, to save himself.

;

In his dream Gene is sixteen again. (Of course, he will say, upon waking, of course he is sixteen, of course he is dreaming of this, of course he is dreaming at all.) It is the spring before the summer that Finny dies. He knows this in the strange amorphous way you know things in dreams. It is spring and something bad is around the corner, and Gene is supposed to stop it somehow. 

Finny is there, obviously, just in the corner of Gene’s vision. The rest of their classmates are there but dream-Gene doesn’t recognize them and can’t give them names. They aren’t important, clearly. The only ones who matter are Phineas and Gene himself. Gene tries to get Finny to stay in one place but he keeps vanishing. One minute they’re together, Gene seated at his desk and Finny standing beside him, the next Gene is alone. He spends what feels like hours looking for Finny in the dorms, but every single time he slips through Gene’s fingers. 

Eventually, Gene finds himself at the tree. In the morning this will not surprise him, but in his dream he is confused and afraid. The tree towers above him, twisting and hideous. It’s leaves are so green they make Gene nauseous. He has to climb it, he realizes suddenly. If he climbs the tree he finds Finny.

Out of nowhere there is a staircase carved into the trunk. Each step is a foot away from the one below it, or so it seems. Gene has to haul himself up each one, and then collapse. He isn’t built for this kind of exertion. No one is, except perhaps Finny, who would see it as nothing more than an amusing challenge. Irritation flickers deep in Gene’s chest, all the old complaints about Finny. Why is Gene even out here looking for this asshole? This is probably some sort of game that Finny had neglected to fill him in on.

If Gene gives up halfway up the tree, though, everyone will know. (Will know what?, the tree asks. At least, Gene thinks it’s the tree. There’s no one else.) They’ll know—what will they know? That Gene is hopeless at feats of strength? (Don’t play dumb, the tree demands.) That Finny played a trick on him, and he fell for it? (Is it a trick? Whose trick is it?) That Gene has gone looking for Finny? (Oh? Have you?) Yes, Gene snaps, as though the tree can hear him, I’m here looking for Finny. He’s missing and I need to find him.

The tree says nothing. Obviously, Gene thinks, it’s a tree. The steps, though, grow smaller. When Gene wakes up he will hate himself for his predictability, for the facile metaphors his subconscious thought appropriate. For now, he settles for hating the tree. The tree is the root of all evil. How biblical. Gene levers himself up another few steps. If Finny isn’t there Gene is going to kill him. (Underneath his feet the tree shudders, as if in laughter.)

Finny will be there. Gene knows it, feels it down to his dream-bones. In some ways he has never trusted another person like he has trusted Finny. Finny is a strange rock but one Gene has learned to rely on. What’s unreliable is Gene’s reaction to Finny; he flashes from irritation to a low-simmering delight with no discernible trigger. One of the tree’s branches brushes his back. “Shut up,” Gene snaps at it.

 

He climbs relentlessly for what feels like hours, but the sun doesn’t move at all. The breeze comes from the south and ripples the grass like waves. Gene doesn’t seem to have moved at all. He’s tired of this; he wants to go back to the dorms or go get lunch, or find someone who isn’t Finny and—. The point is, Gene wants to be anywhere but here, but the tree isn’t letting him down.

“This is stupid,” he says aloud. “There’s no way this is real. Stop fucking with me. Just let me get Finny and let me go.”

The bark shifts underneath his feet, and suddenly the steps are of manageable size, and he can see a branch ahead of him, and knows that’s where Finny is. He can practically see the outline of his back. When Gene reaches him, finally, the sun explodes around them, and he wakes up, furious.

;

“It wasn’t even fucking subtle,” Gene mutters to himself as he makes his coffee. “That fucking tree.”

His manuscript—if he can call a blank sheet of paper a manuscript—sits in the typewriter, taunting him. The dream would at least give him a jumping-off point, if he could distill it down to one or two sentences, if he could strike the truth that lies at its core. _Last night I dreamt that I was climbing the tree where I murdered Phineas._

That’s the only sentence that sticks. He gives up and grades the rest of the student essays, has a drink and leaves a garbled message on Kerry’s answering machine. He sits back down but nothing comes. He has another drink and the cold silence of his apartment taunts him. 

If Finny were here it wouldn’t be so cold, he thinks, unbidden. 

He can’t stay, after that. There’s a bar down the street that Gene never goes to because it has no sign and is frequented exclusively by a cast of ancient regulars who regard anyone outside of their set with suspicion. He chooses there of all places because he feels possessed by some wayward demon, as though his skin is not his own. Gene feels unrecognizable and therefore safe. 

No one looks his way when he enters. Gene orders whiskey tonight because he is not himself, and he is finally free. He hates the taste but he revels in the slow, dark burn. It is a truth he needs. For the rest of the night he does not speak; words are beyond him. The bartender asks no questions, and Gene understands why people come here.

A man comes in, not much older than Gene, and he moves in a way that makes Gene want to watch him, so he does. He isn’t Gene tonight, exactly. Gene, like any man of his age, lugs around behind him a weighted sack of fears and failures and sins (Gene’s greater than most). For now that is left behind in his apartment. Gene can let his eyes stalk the man as he prowls around the bar, slapping backs and smiling with too many teeth before settling into the darkest corner. Gene considers going over to him, but what would he have to say?

_I had a dream that shook me out of my skin. My best friend was waiting for me in the tree where I murdered him and now I can’t stop looking at you._

No. That dog won’t hunt. Gene finishes his drink and leaves once it becomes apparent that the man won’t be leaving his table any time soon. He doesn’t know how long he’s been at the bar but the cold in the air is deep in a way that tells him it’s probably been hours.

He barely manages to take his shoes off before he’s asleep.

;

This dream, at least, is straightforward. Gene is tied to his bed, back at Devon, furious and aroused. Finny kneels, smiling, above him. For a moment Gene thinks his expression is a smirk (wants it to be a smirk, part of a power play, something he can hate) but Finn is just smiling. He looks honestly happy to have Gene there beneath him. 

He cups Gene’s cheek with one hand, and it is so soft, and something in Gene’s chest cracks open. He’s crying, probably, but Finny says nothing. He just eases himself onto Gene’s cock—they’re both naked now, disrobed by the fluidity of dreams.

;

Gene wakes covered in his own cum. He can still feel Finny’s hands on him. The sun is already high, but he lies in bed until the stickiness becomes unbearable. He knew, of course, on some animal level. He had to have known. 

The shower is supposed to wash the touch of Phineas’ ghost away. Instead Gene sloughs everything but that from his skin. The man that emerges, that dresses and heads to the typewriter is not a new man. Rather, he is older, returned to his truer state. Gene lies adeptly, most of all to himself, but it is exhausting. It feels good to be forced into dropping the pretense. Now, he thinks, he has something he can write about. Guilt flashes through him at the thought of turning this into some sort of project, an Endeavour, as it were, but Gene smothers it. 

_Finny and I never touched_ , he starts. It veers off into a sex fantasy that Gene decides can be hidden in the third quarter of the book, by which point most of his nonexistent readers will have given up.

The phone rings just before he embarrasses himself. It’s Kerry, who immediately starts yelling at him for leaving her a drunken message. Underneath the anger she’s fond, and it makes Gene smile, too.

“Are you,” he blurts. “Do you want to maybe see each other again? I miss you.”

“Gene!” 

“Do you?”

“You’re so demanding. I have time to get a coffee—that place near my parents’, if you’ll buy me one.”

“I think I can handle that.”

For a moment he thinks she’s hung up on him.

“Gene,” she says, softly, “I missed you, too.”

“Kerry,” he breathes into the receiver, but she’s gone.

He sits for a moment and enjoys the light through his window. Cold and clear.

 _There is a love that coalesces only after its object is lost_ , he writes. _And that is what Phineas left me_.


End file.
